Word: forests
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Fredric Cooper Forest Hills...
Barbara Daly Oak Forest...
...maple trees on ten acres of his 700-acre Vermont spread. A reduction in maple trees could spell disaster for the state's $10 million-a-year sugar industry. Other areas could be hit hard as well. Says Joe McClure of the Southern Region Office of the U.S. Forest Service: "Potential losses would be very significant if a long-term decline developed. Timber sales are just the beginning. The Southeast relies heavily on wood growing, transporting and manufacturing products from...
...gather evidence of damage, the U.S. Forest Service each decade resurveys thousands of one-acre plots, checking the diameter and height of trees and looking for portents of new growth. The ongoing survey of Southern Piedmont woodlands shows that in the past ten years the growth rate of loblolly pine, a coniferous evergreen, has been 25% less than expected. Botanist Vogelmann's 20-year study of Camels Hump has shown a rapid decline in nine species of trees on the 4,083-ft. peak. The biomass (the combined weight of tree trunk, branches and foliage) has dropped sharply...
Solutions seem a long way off. Arboreal experts are only now beginning to assess the severity of the problem. The Forest Service, for example, has just started a study of the condition of yellow pine, the South's prime source of commercial timber. At Oak Ridge, botanists are examining samples of soil for traces of metals such as aluminum and zinc. In May, U.S. forest experts will travel to West Germany to compare notes with European scientists; in turn, German researchers will visit the U.S. in June. Says Fred White, staff forester with the North Carolina division of forest...